1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a wood fiberboard, in particular a floor panel, comprising an HDF support board with a top side and an underside, the top side having a decoration, preferably a wood or tile decoration, and to a process for producing such a wood fiberboard.
2. Background Description
Floor panels with a wood-fiber support board are usually referred to as laminate panels and have been commercially available for many years as a substitute for parquet flooring. The desired decoration (parquet, woodgrain, tiles, etc.) is printed onto a paper web, which is then coated with resin and rolled onto a roll. At the floor manufacturer's, the decorative web which has been prefabricated in this way is positioned on the support board and pressed. As a result of the operations of printing the decoration on to the paper web, of subsequently sealing the paper web with synthetic resin and of then connecting the decorative layer to the support board by pressure and temperature, the dimensions of the paper web change. According to the person skilled in the art, the paper grows. The paper grows both in length (increase in length) and in width (increase in width). If this decorative board is then to be cut to size to form individual panels, the increase in length and width has to be taken into account because, otherwise, the decoration would be distributed unevenly on the individual panels. This would result in the floor made up of an unevenly distributed decorative layer having the decorations offset along the connecting edges of the panels. Even if the decorations are only offset by a few millimeters, they are obvious to the observer, this having an adverse effect on the esthetic appearance and thus reducing the quality of the covered floor.
In order for it to be possible to carry out production with appropriate quality, the paper growth has to be detected and the saw which saws the panels from the support board has to be set correspondingly. Manual setting is very time-consuming. DE 100 19 054 C1 describes a process which is intended for cutting panels to size from a support board and by means of which the saw can be automatically adapted to the paper growth. Cameras are necessary for this purpose, the cameras determining the actual position of defined points of the decoration. The actual position is then compared with the desired position and the deviation of the width or length dimension is determined, with the result that the saw can be set correspondingly.
In order to optimize the cutting, fairly high outlay is thus necessary, and this increases the cost of the production of high-grade panels. In order further to match the appearance of the laminate panel to the appearance of a natural-wood panel, a relief-containing female die may be provided in the press in which the decorative layer is pressed with the support board, a relief which corresponds to the woodgrain being stamped into the synthetic resin layer by means of said die. Since the paper growth is not reproducible, it is not possible to make the relief correspond fully with the decoration. The joints of a tiled surface cannot be stamped into the surface of the synthetic-resin layer since deviations would be immediately visible here.